


into the shifting sea

by holdingontolou



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Brain Cancer, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Implied Sexual Content, Internal Conflict, M/M, Semi Slow Burn, Terminal Illness, i have never ONCE utilized a beta and i suffer for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:00:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28494987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holdingontolou/pseuds/holdingontolou
Summary: Things were supposed to get better.And the funny thing is, he almost genuinely believed that they would.-“What’s on your mind?” George asks, voice shaped in that special way of his. He lets out a gentle breath.Dream considers this for a moment, biting down on his lip.“That I’m dying,” he replies, voice rougher than he intends for it to be.“You’re not dying,” George says sadly, and it’s such a blatant lie that Dream almost wants to scoff.But he just pulls his beanie over his ears and stares out the window. Rain droplets trace down the pane slowly.“You’re not,” George repeats, but his words are weak.“Okay, George,” Dream mutters.The words sound bitter even to himself.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 70
Kudos: 208





	1. Prior To

**Author's Note:**

> Under NO circumstances is this fic meant to be made public with the content creators involved. Please do not reupload this fic anywhere else (Wattpad lol - I do actually have it uploaded there under the handle @ holdingontolou for readers who prefer that view); I will make sure that it is removed.  
> Additionally, in no way does this represent mannerisms, personalities, accurate events, of the people mentioned, and this fic does NOT represent the actual relationships of real people NOR does it represent my beliefs of the actual relationships of real people.  
> Finally, this is obviously a work of fiction. Many elements, including family and relationships, are fictional and not drawn from the real-life events of the real people mentioned.  
> Thank you, and please enjoy!  
> Potential TW for some readers- please read with caution.

Outside, rain trickles down the fogged-over panes of his windows. It hasn’t rained for what seems like months, but tonight, the rain patters down on his roof gently.

He’s tired, is the thing. He’s had this headache that feels like it’s lasted for weeks, and he would pay genuine money to make it go away—

“Dream,” he hears someone say. His headphones are down around his neck and he pulls them up quickly.

“Yo,” he says, jolting forward to exit the game menu. The sudden motion makes the pain in his head expand and he gingerly places a cool set of fingers against his temples. He doesn’t know if it helps, but he rubs small circles into the skin anyway.

“Where’s your head at?” George teases gently as Sapnap says, “You zoned, man.”

 _My head is being crushed,_ Dream thinks. _By a cinder block_.

“My bad,” he says. He clicks out of the game momentarily to check the stream. “Sorry, chat. I just have a headache.”

“Again?” George says, and the way he says it is almost like it’s some sort of _muse_. Dream bites his lip to ignore the warm feeling that starts to slowly bloom in his chest. The pain dulls, momentarily, but it roars back just seconds later. There’s a touch of concern in George’s voice that’s almost _tangible_ , like Dream could cup it in his hands and press it against his chest. It makes his stomach feel funny, like tendrils of every emotion to ever exist are wrapping around each other and becoming one.

“ _Clay,_ ” Sapnap is saying again, and Dream lets out a stifled laugh.

“I’m here, man,” he says quickly, tapping back into the game.

“The stream’s over, dumbass,” Sapnap says. Dream’s mouth forms into a solid _O_.

“Are you tired?” George asks, and there it is again—the way his voice rises ever-so-softly, the way he says _you_. Like he’s gently teasing the words out just for Dream. 

“A little,” Dream remembers to say.

“He’s _baked_ ,” Sapnap says.

Dream glances at the pen that lies next to his mouse. “A little,” he admits. Sapnap lets out a choking laugh and Dream glances at the clock. It’s two AM on the dot.

 _Holy shit_.

“What the fuck, George,” he says aloud. “It’s _so_ fucking late for you, man.”

George hums. “Early,” he corrects.

Because—right. George actually sleeps, or something like that. He just gets up early when they stream.

In-game, the little box shows up to say that Wilbur joined. They had just been free-playing in one of their servers on stream, but Dream spent most of the stream zoning out and occasionally making a joke.

Sapnap clicks out of the call and sends a message in the group chat. _Join call in server?_ he asks. George hums again.

“Are you going to join?” Dream asks.

“I may,” George replies, but he doesn’t seem to be in any rush to leave the call. “I’m a bit tired.”

“I thought you actually slept,” Dream teases. He glances back up at his computer screen. Unlike him, George has his camera on; his dark hair curls around his neck and his headphones are pulled over his head. He grins and tilts his head into his hands, eyes crinkled and smile widened. Dream wishes that he could squash those butterflies flying around in his stomach before they climb back out and explode out of every part of him. 

“I had stuff to do,” is the only explanation that George offers.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, that smile going even wider.

“Should go to sleep, then.”

George’s head tilts the opposite way again. His white t-shirt is rumpled and his hair is messy in that bed-headed way that’s so typical for him, but it’s—

It’s _cute_.

 _Shut up_ , he says to himself. _It’s not_.

But it is. But it _so_ is.

“You look nice,” Dream says, but only because he knows George will laugh. Only because he knows that he can get away with it.

“Shut up,” George says, his nose scrunching, but he laughs anyway.

With a start, Dream realizes that his headache has disappeared. For now.

 _Thank God_.

The fan above him whirs softly; it makes a gentle _click-click-click_ noise as it spins. From his bed, Patches meows, and his clock glows _2:22 AM_ in angry red print.

From his monitor, George looks absolutely exhausted.

“Are you tired?” Dream mumbles.

George smiles a syrupy, sleepy smile. “‘Course.”

“I’m not,” Dream lies.

“Oh?” George looks intrigued. He leans his face closer to the camera, tongue sticking out. “And why’s that?”

“Because I’m talking to you.”

And it’s not entirely a lie, that’s the thing.

George kind of stiffens at that, leaning away from his computer screen. He raises an arm to scratch his head awkwardly, but Dream doesn’t miss the faint pinkness in his cheeks. “Alright, then…,” George says like it’s all he knows to say.

“I’m being serious,” Dream says. He laughs into his hands, but George doesn’t miss it.

George’s voice hardens. “Sure,” he says. The softness to his voice disappears as if it’s been swallowed by the early morning of Britain. Behind him, Dream can see a little bit of sunlight spilling in from a window.

“Do you think I’m lying?” Dream asks in a singsong voice.

George sighs at that. He lowers his headphones off of his ears and flips Dream the bird.

 _Arsehole_ , Dream can see him mouth. George lifts one portion of his headphones up and presses it against his ear, standing up, face pointed at the screen but he’s leaned forward with one hand on his mouse.

“I’m gonna have to nap for four hours,” he says, but the tone he wore earlier is almost completely gone. There’s a rippling pang in Dream’s chest that he doesn’t know where to place.

In the box of emotions-to-never-be-thought-about-ever, maybe. 

George lifts a sleepy-looking cat up from his bed and points it at his computer screen, moving its front paw to make it look as if it’s waving. It’s tiny, not much larger than two of his palms. He got it in October, Dream remembers.

“Say bye to Dream,” George says, but the edge to his voice still remains. The kitten squints at the screen, looking as if it wants to do anything but that.

Dream hits his pen one more time. He tells himself it’s for good luck. “Goodnight, George,” he says with a cough.

George’s camera goes off and then his avatar drops from the screen. Without him, the room is suddenly so quiet that Dream doesn’t know how he should feel.

Next to him, his phone buzzes. When Dream flips his phone over, he sees that a text from Sapnap lights the screen up.

_Join the call now that you and George are done canoodling?_

He lets out a groan and rubs a hand against his head.

 _How dif you even kniw the call ended,_ he types out with one hand, noticing the spelling errors but still sending the text without correcting them.

Sapnap’s reply is immediate. _I saw the call drop_. _Group chat, remember?_

Dream groans a second time and he flips his phone back over. He stares at his ceiling for a second, watching the wings of his fans spin so quickly that they combine before he leans forward to shut his PC off.

His headache is back, now, the pain pounding into his temples. And he’s pretty sure that George is pissed, but he isn’t sure why.

Well—maybe he knows why. And maybe he’s almost definitely going to get a pissed-off text from Sapnap in the morning, but he can’t bring himself to care.

He strips his shirt and pants off until he’s just in boxers and he brushes his teeth and pisses and swears to himself that he’s not thinking about George.

It’s weird, he knows, this sudden… _thing_ …that’s happening. Like how he thinks about George more than he’d like. Like how he’s begun to tease George to the point that he’s unsure if it’s even actually teasing.

Underneath the covers of his bed, he clenches a fistful of pillow.

It doesn’t matter.

It _shouldn’t_ matter.

And he still has this fucking headache.

 _God_.

…

_“Are you okay, Dream?” George asks, leaning against Dream’s desk. His arms are crossed._

_Dream would focus on this, but the pain in his head is making it impossible. He wants to open his mouth to say something, anything, but all he can do is shake his head furiously. It’s as if the room around him is pulsing, pounding with the heartbeat he feels in his head._

_“Dream?” George repeats, reaching his arms forward. Dream tries to grab his hand, squeeze it, feel something real, but he slips through George’s hands as he reaches for them and falls forward._

_George’s voice turns into Sapnap’s as he repeats, “Dream?”_

_Dream reaches up one final time to grasp George’s hand, and right as he is able to grasp his wrist, the world around him shatters into darkness._

_There’s a final, fleeting, blood-curdling scream in George’s voice: “Dream!”_

…

Dream wakes up in a pile of cold sweat and with a headache worse than it’d been last night.

_He’s hungover_ , he thinks.

_No_ , he remembers, _I haven’t drunk in months._

He feels so sick that he forces himself to go back to sleep for another hour, and he wakes up at 12:36 PM to a dry mouth and, just like he’d expected, a text from Sapnap.

_Why didn’t you text back last night?_

_Is George mad at you?_

He throws his phone back on his bed and drinks three glasses of water. He forces down some toast before going on a short run around his neighborhood.

He doesn’t throw up, but he has to cut the run short half a mile in out of fear that he will. His headache dulls a lot, though. He guesses that it was from the water. He could just have a stomach bug; he knows that his sister had one that lasted three weeks a few months ago.

When he gets home, he grabs his phone off of his desk and falls back onto his bed. He has a few more texts from Sapnap, one more from George.

_We’re streaming!_ Sapnap had texted.

_U good?_ George had texted.

The thought of getting back on his PC is nauseating. Hell, the thought of even just getting off of his _bed_ is nauseating. He thinks about Sapnap’s text from earlier.

_Is George mad at you?_

Dream sighs. He rolls over and shoots George a text.

_Are you mad at me?_

Almost immediately, his phone buzzes with a reply from George. And then it begins to ring. Dream stares at the vibrating device before pressing the green _accept call_ button.

“Why would I be mad at you?”

George’s voice comes out of Dream’s speakers, loud and crackly. Dream winces.

“Sapnap said something,” he replies after an awkward beat passes. “So I just thought…”

“No.” George’s voice is curt.

“You seem mad now,” Dream points out.

“No. I’m just…frustrated.”

Dream squishes his face into his pillow. He props his phone against his forehead so that he can still hear George. “Why?” he asks.

“You make…shitty jokes.”

Dream cracks a grin even though he knows that George can’t see him. “Who says they’re jokes?”

“See! You’re doing it literally right now!”

“Lit-rally,” Dream mocks, but he frowns as a sudden wave of nausea overcomes him. “Ow,” he mumbles.

Almost immediately, George’s tone becomes more tender. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Dream mumbles. “I’m sick,” he says, because it’s the explanation that makes the most sense to his tired, tired brain.

“I’m sorry,” George replies, adopting the same low tone that Dream has. “Have you seen the doctor?”

Dream starfishes out on his bed and his phone falls against his shoulder. “No.”

“Well, why not?”

“It’s a stomach bug. I don’t need to see the doctor.”

“You could still…” George trails off.

Dream closes his eyes, leaning against the cooler side of his pillow. Briefly, he imagines George next to him, cool hands reaching out to press against his cheek and—

His eyes fly open, face burning.

What the _fuck_.

Suddenly, he realizes that he hasn’t spoken in way too long. He can practically feel the awkward silence that extends out of his phone.

“I’m okay,” he says immediately, unsure of what George said last but hoping his response to be okay.

His response was, apparently, not okay.

“You’re okay?” George asks, his tone a mixture of both amused and bemused. “Did you even hear what I said, Clay?”

Dream’s face feels even warmer. “No,” he admits.

George chuckles. “I said, Nick was thinking of—flying out, maybe.”

“To where? Florida?” Dream stands up and presses the phone against his ear with his left hand. He moves towards where his AC is the coolest, in the center of his living room, before continuing. “Why would he tell you—“

“ _Clay_.”

“Huh?”

“He was talking about flying out…here.”

“Wait.” Slowly, what George is saying dawns over Dream. “Oh.” When George doesn’t continue, he weakly says, “But Florida’s so much better, though.”

Dream knows that George shrugs in the expanding moment of silence. It should be his turn to talk, but George offers a gentle statement within the bubble that feels as if it’s formed around Dream.

“You should come,” he says.

It isn’t a request, necessarily. He doesn’t _ask_ Dream to come, he doesn’t _ask_ Dream to fly out of Orlando and come to England. He says it as if it’s a given; as if Dream flying to England will make things better in every way. As if he knows, somehow.

_He can’t know that_ , Dream thinks. _I could make things so much worse_ , he wants to say.

“You should,” George repeats, and Dream’s throat is so dry it feels as if swallowing is impossible.

“Okay,” he finally says.

He’s seen George before. Hell, he’s seen Sapnap _multiple_ times. But those visits were always less _personal_ ; they happened at hotels outside of big cities and always in Florida.

But that was years ago. They hadn’t talked about a visit since.

And—a flight to England, a flight to George’s hometown—it seems more _personal_. It’s more _real_ than hotel meet-ups in a city that barely feels real itself; more real than meet-ups tethered together by a thin line of fever dreams and what they wish reality really was.

“How soon would we go?” he asks after a moment that feels eternal passes.

“A month?” George offers.

“Okay,” Dream repeats. His heart begins to beat so hard that he feels dizzy. George begins to speak again, but all he’s able to do is say, “I’m sorry,” before he has to click out of the call and sink down against his wall.

He holds a weak hand against his head. He wants to do this. He really, really wants to. He wants to see George so badly that it feels as if there’s a burning hole in the center of his chest.

But that—that _desire_ —that’s what scares him the most.

…

_You’ve upset George,_ Sapnap texts him a few days later. Dream had spent the week avoiding both of them in an Advil-induced haze of Call of Duty and the occasional solo Minecraft stream. His migraines seem to disappear, but he gets so nauseous so badly that he has to stop what he’s doing and sit down, sometimes.

_I’m scared_ , Dream wishes he could say. Instead, all he does is buy the plane ticket and send a screenshot to George and Sapnap through a group chat. He asks his neighbor to watch Patches for the time that he’s gone.

_Let’s go, boys!_ George sends back, but Dream can’t find it in himself to reply.

He’s not _avoiding_ George, but Sapnap doesn’t understand when he tries to explain it.

“You’re avoiding him alright,” he says when he’s finally able to get a hold of Dream through his phone. “You haven’t streamed in days, man. George can _tell_.”

Dream wants to say something to defend himself, anything, but he doesn’t know what he _can_ say. Because Sapnap is right.

_You don’t get it_ , he wants to say.

All he can think about is that stupid trip to England. That stupid trip to see George.

“I’ll talk to him,” he tells Sapnap before hanging up.

He doesn’t talk to George. He streams with them a few times, but all of the conversations that he has with George are hollow, and he knows that George can tell.

But whenever he thinks about saying something of substance to him, something that means something, all he can think about is seeing George. Of how it’s going to go. If it’s going to be awkward. If George thinks about the phone calls that they used to have as much as he fucking does.

…

_“How did you find out?” Dream asks George one night, long after Sapnap has retired although his room remains shrouded in darkness. In a sense, the nighttime makes him safer. As if when the sun begins to rise, this moment will melt away as if it never even happened._

_“Find out?” George asks. “Find out what?” he prods gently._

_“That you’re…” Dream’s mouth twists together at an awkward angle. “You know.”_

_George sighs. “When I was young,” is all he offers to say._

Did you find out? _Dream almost expects him to ask._

I found out when I met you _, he wants to say back, to this pretend question from a pretend George._

_But real George doesn’t ask this pretend question and so Dream doesn’t give his pretend answer and he goes on as the pretend Dream who doesn’t give a fuck even though every part of him aches to._

…

_“You’re just pretty, you know?” Dream says, throwing his head back as he guzzles down a can of beer._

_“I’m just pretty?” George says with a laugh. Dream can hear the sound of shot glasses hitting a table just moments later._

_They’re drunk, probably too drunk, and this is probably the worst setting for them to be alone on a phone call together._

_Dream takes another sip of beer. “You’re hot,” he admits, the beer like liquid courage running through his veins._

_A moment stretches forward. It becomes tauter, and tauter, and tauter, and then—_

_“I think that you’re pretty hot, too,” George says, and the moment between them snaps like a rubber band._

…

One evening, he finally gets enough courage to call George. He doesn’t offer any warning to him before he types his phone number into his phone and presses the _call_ _button_.

His phone rings once, twice, and then three times, and Dream’s partly convinced that George isn’t going to pick up and that he’s never going to have the courage to do this again.

But just as he’s placing his phone down on his bed, George’s voice floats out of his phone speakers.

“Clay?” he asks. His voice is somehow both delicate and raspy as if he was just woken up.

Dream takes in a shallow inhale.

“Clay?” George repeats.

“Do you ever think about when we used to talk on the phone?” Dream says quickly, knowing that the words can’t be taken back now that he’s thrown them out. He almost doesn’t expect George to know what he’s talking about, he almost expects George to continue pretending as if those conversations never happened just like they’ve always done.

Dream can hear him swallow, hard.

“I don’t know,” he replies. Then he says, “Maybe.” And finally, softly, so low that his voice is barely even a whisper, “ Yes.”

“Why?”

George laughs. “Why?” he asks. “ _Why_ , Clay? Because you’re—God.”

Dream stares out of his bedroom window. The sun is setting and an orange glow is cast over his driveway, and Patches lounges in a spot of sunshine-covered grass. Absentmindedly, he thinks to let Patches in before it gets too dark.

“I think about it all the time,” Dream admits, remembering where he is. He crosses his legs over each other and bunches up a fistful of his sweatpants. “But we barely even—“

“Don’t say it,” George whispers.

“Don’t say what?”

“That we—that we—“ He hesitates. “That we barely know each other.”

“But it…”

“It isn’t true.”

_I wish it was_ , Dream thinks, and it isn’t even necessarily true that he wishes that, but it’s still a thought that crosses through his mind and he thinks there’s something that’s fundamentally important about that. That maybe, just maybe, if he applies meaning to that thought, there’s something that’ll make it real. Something that’ll make it _true_.

“Those conversations meant _something_ ,” George says forcefully. “They meant something, Clay. Right?” His voice cracks on the last syllable.

_Of course they did!_ Dream wants to shout. _They mean everything to me, you dumbass! Why can’t you just see that?_

“I don’t know,” he makes himself whisper, and he hangs up the phone.

He places his face in his hands and closes his eyes.

He lets Patches in. He microwaves frozen pasta for dinner and it comes out half-frozen, but he forces it down anyway.

Nearing eleven, he texts George.

It’s a simple text. Two words.

_i’m scared._

George’s reply comes quickly. Dream feels a twinge of concern in his chest, a twinge of worry that he’s kept George up, a twinge of worry about anything there is to be worried about.

_Why_? he texts back.

_i don’t want things to change between us._

He throws his phone against his bed and it buzzes once more, but he can’t bring himself to send anymore messages. His head begins to hurt again, a pounding migraine that he can feel all the way down to his feet, as if his heart is beating in a million different places at once. Dream has to burrow under his comforter with a pillow shoved over his head for the headache to even begin to _dull_.

…

_“You’re a coward,” Sapnap says to him._

_Dream doesn’t know where he is, but he can tell somewhere with rain coming down in thick sheets. As he looks down at his hands, it’s almost as if they’re dripping away with the rain. When he looks at Sapnap, he is, too._

_“Maybe,” he chooses to reply._

_Sapnap’s mouth twists to the side and his head tilts. “You’re going to see him soon, Clay.”_

_Dream crosses his arms. He shivers as the rain continues to drench both him and Sapnap. “I’m trying,” he says, turning away._

_Sapnap turns away, too. “You’re going to lose him,” he says, but as Dream turns around to face him, he melts away along with the rain._

_“Fuck you,” Dream says and he, too, then becomes one with the rain._

…

The week before the trip, Sapnap tricks him into joining a Discord call with him and George.

_We’re streaming_ , he said.

There was no stream. There was just an awkward, awkward Discord call with an angry Sapnap and an even quieter George.

“You guys could at least have the decency of telling me what’s going on,” Sapnap snaps the moment Dream connects to the call, but his tone is so ridiculous that Dream lets out a chuckle. There’s a second of silence, and Dream knows that Sapnap is probably going to lose his shit, but then George starts to laugh, too.

“Have the decency—the decency—“ George says between each laugh.

“No, I’m fucking serious, man,” Sapnap snaps, voice cut so sharply that both he and George immediately shut up. “We haven’t streamed in _days_. People can tell that there’s something—“

“I don’t care,” Dream says plainly.

“Yeah, alright. Would you remind me of how you’re paying for that three-bedroom apartment in Orlando?”

Dream knows well enough not to say anything else. When Sapnap gets like this, things can go badly very quickly.

Patches jumps up on the desk next to him and he rubs his hand down her back. Both George and Sapnap remain silent. Things had never been this tense between them before, and it leaves an odd feeling in Dream’s stomach. He can hear the clicking of Sapnap’s mouse in the background.

“Nick,” George begins with a sigh after the awkward silence becomes almost completely unbearable, but he doesn’t continue.

“Figure this out,” Sapnap says. He clicks out of the call, leaving Dream alone with George.

Dream places his head in his hands, rubbing soft circles against his eyes. He’s startled when George begins to speak even though his voice is gentle, soft like how he imagines velvet would sound.

“So you’re just going to leave then, right?” he asks.

With his mouse poised over the _leave call_ button, Dream quickly says, “That’s not true.”

A moment later, George’s avatar melts into a square of _George_.

He’s turned his camera on.

His hair is ruffled and he wears a grey sweatshirt with the hood up and bags rest under his eyes and Dream feels a pang of _something_ in his chest that he forces down, down, and away.

And for some weird reason—

“Are you wearing clout goggles?”

George moves the sunglasses up onto his head. He shrugs, lolling his head into his hand. “So what if I am?”

“Alright,” Dream mumbles.

The glasses slide off of George’s head and clatter against his desk. If Dream wasn’t a nihilist, maybe he would think that _clatter_ stood for something.

“How have you been, Clay?”

It’s a strange thing for him to ask, Dream thinks. Conversations between them are never _how are you_ -s or _how was your day_ -s. They’re…easy. Never like this.

“Bad,” Dream replies honestly.

“Are you…”

“I’m fine. How…how are you?”

“Karl says you’ve been ill.”

_Fuck you, Karl,_ Dream thinks.

“A little bit,” he admits.

And George just looks down at his hands. He holds his hoodie string in one and wraps it around his wrist, slowly. “Clay,” he says, and Dream hums in acknowledgment. He lowers his head. “We don’t have to talk about this, man,” he says.

“I—“

Dream feels his face flush. He feels suddenly nauseous, like the room around him is spinning and he isn’t.

“I want to see you,” he forces out. “I-I’ve been thinking.”

“You’ve had a lot of time to do that,” George says dryly. Dream winces. And as if he knows, George quickly says, “Sorry.”

Dream moves his mouse towards the closed-off camera box on the Discord call. He hesitates. Eyes closed, he clicks on the box, and a tiny green dot appears next to his webcam to signify that it’s on.

George lets out a sharp inhale.

Dream has his hood and pulls it lower over his head, cheeks pressed against his hands. He knows that George can see maybe five percent of his face, but it’s oddly comforting; that sense of security that he has. He’s in control of this situation.

“I…forgot what you looked like,” George says, tone as if he’s admitting something, and he lets out a breathy chuckle. Dream laughs with him.

“But pretty hot, right?” Dream replies, voice muffled against his hand.

George opens his mouth and closes it. He raises a hand like he has something to protest, opens his mouth once more, and then closes it a final time.

“Cat got your tongue?” Dream teases.

“More like you ripped it out of my mouth and left a bloody stump.”

“Gross, man.” He wrinkles his nose. “George, I…”

George’s voice is soft. “Yeah?”

“ _God_. I just—I want to see you so, so badly. It’s like it’s burning a giant fucking hole in my chest, and I’m just so—embarrassed by it all,” he says, voice lowering until it becomes barely even a whisper by the final word.

George is quiet for a moment. “I know what you mean,” he says. He glances directly at his webcam, maintaining eye contact with Dream.

“I didn’t _like_ anybody until I met you,” Dream says, breaking the gaze, and he stares down at the grain in his table. He expects his voice to be bitter. He doesn’t know why it isn’t. “So I didn’t think…”

“Yeah,” George says, voice so gentle that Dream almost wants to cry. “It’s okay,” he continues, voice smoother, softer, and all Dream wants to do is rip away every part of him that cares about how fucking _smooth_ or _gentle_ or _soft_ his best friend’s voice is.

“Will you be well enough to fly?” George suddenly asks.

“What?” Dream replies, barely able to track the conversation at hand.

George gives him a half-smile as if to say _you’re funny_. “You’ve been ill, yeah?”

Dream shakes his head quickly. “No—I mean, yeah—but I’ll be fine. Fine to fly.”

George’s mouth quirks up at the edges. He looks like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t press the issue. “Okay. Are we good, then?” he questions, an air of uncertainty to his tone, and Dream almost fully hates himself for placing that tone to George’s voice.

“Yeah,” Dream mumbles, ripping at a thread of his sweatshirt sleeve. _Better than good_ , he wants to say, but he doesn’t, and George says goodbye and there’s something else to his words that hang in the air before he hangs up, leaving Dream sitting at his desk in a room that’s more silent than is dark.

Dream rips a second thread thread off of his sweatshirt and almost feels like crying even though he hasn’t in months.

_Better than good_ , he thinks as he crawls into bed, headache back.

As he pulls his comforter over his shoulder, he thinks, _This is when things are going to get better_. 

…

Dream spends the week before his flight streaming with Sapnap and George and the viewers seem to forget that something had been wrong altogether. Tommy is exiled with him and throughout the week, Dream’s headaches seem to dull and he only gets nauseous in the mornings.

_Maybe you’re pregnant,_ Sapnap jokes, and it’s barely funny but Dream texts back an _LOL_ anyway.

_You don’t have to be sarcastic :/_ , Sapnap texts.

_LOL._

The night before the flight, he’s on the phone with George. They were texting something stupid about how Gamepigeon is rigged, but then Dream found himself pressing on George’s contact in iMessage and then pressing the _call_ button before he even had time to think about what he was doing.

“Hello,” George says right as he picks up the phone.

“I’m nervous,” Dream says, and all he wants to do at that moment is to jump straight out of his apartment window. He doesn’t have a filter anymore, apparently.

“I’m nervous, too,” George says like it’s supposed to be comforting. And maybe it is. Dream can barely tell. He finds that his hands are shaking and tries to still them but fails. “But I think that it’s all going to work out.”

“Yeah?” Dream asks, eyes squeezed shut.

“Yeah,” George replies. “You’ll be okay.”

“Will _we_?” His voice is pitiful as if he’s a child. He feels like he’s seven-years-old again, searching for validation in a place where none exists.

“I can’t predict the future, Clay, but I think that we will.”

“Okay.”

“It’ll be okay,” George repeats, and Dream says he wants to go to sleep to catch the plane and all George does is say _Okay_ again.

“Stay,” he finds himself whispering as he’s drifting asleep, and so George does.

…

The next morning, he catches his plane but just barely and he has thirty texts from Sapnap as the plane is taking off.

_Plane_ , is all he texts Sapnap.

_WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS MEAN_?!?! Nick texts back

_idk_.

Dream pretends that he’s not nervous as he does a layover in Washington DC and he pretends that he’s not nervous as he watches a movie on the plane and he pretends that he’s not nervous as the plane begins to land in Brighton.

He pretends that he’s not nervous as he meets Sapnap outside of the airport and he pretends that he’s not nervous as the taxi George called for them pulls in front of his house.

_I’m not nervous,_ he thinks.

“Yes I am,” he says aloud, and both Sapnap and the taxi driver look at him strangely.

As he and Sapnap climb out of the taxi, he realizes very suddenly that his headache is back.


	2. In-Between

“Are you okay?” Sapnap asks.

They’re standing in the yard of George’s place. Dream had expected an apartment, but it’s really more of a small house, with shutters and window boxes with tiny flowers growing out of them.

Moonlight spills across the yard. Dream had barely realized how dark it’d gotten.

“Yeah,” he makes himself say.

Sapnap shakes his head like he’s being ridiculous.

Dream glances towards the porch of George’s house, and with a start, realizes that George is standing right in front of the door, arms crossed and wearing a wide grin.

Dream runs to the porch and his form of greeting for George is a hug, and it strikes him then how much _taller_ he is than George, and it’s strange how everything seems to fall into place just then.

 _I missed you_ , he wants to say, and so he does, unashamed and proud. And Sapnap shakes his head again but he smiles and all they do that first night is sit together on the couch as if they’ve been drowning without each other and, in some ways, perhaps they have.

…

It’s nearing twelve AM England-time when Sapnap decides to head to bed, leaving George and Dream alone together on George’s couch. His living room is nice, small but with soft couches and with rugs strewn across the room. Dream’s apartment has a clinical feel to it, with white furniture and whiter walls, but George’s house is the opposite of that and Dream isn’t entirely sure of how it should make him feel.

Sapnap bids them goodnight with a side-eyed glance to Dream, head tilting, before George leads him to his office that has a blow-up mattress. They’re supposed to share, but Dream is considering sleeping on George’s couch.

Before he comes to a decision, George comes back from around the corner, eyes bright with a smile that’s somehow even sunnier. His eyes trail down Dream as if he hadn’t gotten to look at him before even though Dream knows that he did.

“You look good,” George says, and it says everything and nothing at the same time.

“You look better,” Dream replies, eyes taking in George as if he’s a desperate, drowning man, drinking so that he survives.

“Fuck, Dream…I.” George brings a hand to his head. He glances away. “I don’t know what I’m expecting,” he says, voice drawn to a hushed whisper.

Dream slides his glance across the room. He focuses on a stack of records that rest on George’s coffee table, none of them with names that he’s heard of. His headache is back; it came back the moment the taxi arrived at George’s house, but he tries to focus on anything but the pounding in his head that seems like it’s lasted for months.

Without looking at George, Dream says, “I’ve thought about seeing you every single day for the last two months.”

“Look at me,” George says with his eyes that Dream knows are so big and brown without even having to look at him.

And so Dream does, and perhaps it’s the jet lag, but the moment that he looks at George, everything he wanted to say came bubbling out in a choked whisper. “You’re gorgeous.”

George’s cheeks flush. “What?”

“Shit, George.”

It’s a start, Dream thinks, as they sit together on that green couch.

It’s a start, he thinks, as George takes him into his arms.

They sit down together on that green couch for what feels like a thousand years, years that begin to melt together like dripping candle wax with a flame made out of George and everything beautiful about him. 

…

The trip continues and the headache stays, but Dream pretends that it isn’t there for what he swears to himself is George and Sapnap’s sake. Sapnap catches him early in the morning one day digging through George’s bathroom cabinet for something that resembles Advil, but he doesn’t make any comments to him or George.

They spend the days exploring Brighton and the beach despite the cold and they spend the nights streaming together. Sapnap always retires to his room by two AM, leaving George and Dream alone together. They’ve moved to his room instead of his couch; they use his laptop for crappy TV shows instead of his television.

“What are we doing?” he asks George one night while they’re in his bedroom, and that’s when George kisses him for the first time.

“This,” he says, and he strips his shirt off, and everything around them begins to melt.

…

“You two,” Sapnap says over breakfast.

George and Dream exchange glances.

“Nah,” is all Dream offers to say.

Sapnap takes a bite of his cereal. His eyes go from Dream to George. He takes a final bite, stands up, leaves the room, and then the sound of a door slamming resonates across the house.

Dream goes instead of George whether it be because he’s known Sapnap for the longest or because George doesn’t want to deal with it. He doesn’t knock, but Sapnap doesn’t say anything. He’s sitting on the blow-up mattress when Dream opens the door, his legs crossed. Dream sits down next to him.

They don’t talk for a long time.

“Have at least the liberty to be honest with me,” is what Sapnap chooses to say.

Dream shrugs with one shoulder. This time, he doesn’t speak for a long time.

“I’m sorry,” is what he chooses to say.

Sapnap cracks a grin as he looks at Dream. “You’re happy about it, aren’t you?”

Dream turns away. “No,” he lies, knowing that his cheeks are going red.

Sapnap places an arm around his shoulder. “Proud of you, Clay.”

It’s a nice start to the morning. Dream doesn’t say it, but he appreciates it. He doesn’t have to. Nick knows and so that’s why he grins even when Dream doesn’t.

…

Sapnap and Dream somehow bully George into smoking pot with them, even though George has never expressed interest in it before. But Sapnap asks Wilbur where to find weed and so he drives an hour and a half to London and spends ten dollars on gas and fifteen on marijuana.

When he returns, he’s able to convince George to roll a joint that is more misshapen than anything, but Dream laughs and fixes it and lights it and shares it with George.

They walk to the beach because it’s only half a mile away and Sapnap brings towels and a lighter and when they get there, he spends the first ten minutes collecting wood for a bonfire while George leans against Dream’s shoulder in the cold sand.

Once the fire has been made, once the cold air is replaced by a warm draft, they sit together, laughing at shitty memes and sharing stupid stories. They keep their voices low as if their little bubble of charred wood and chirping crickets will break if they speak any louder.

That night, they threw shitty dares at each other but it somehow makes the night even more perfect than Dream thinks it’ll be.

George has to beat both Dream and Sapnap in a race, Dream has to dive into the ocean while wearing only a hoodie, and Sapnap has to eat an ant that was found by Dream by a grassy area of the beach. Later, they sit together, quiet, and George sits against Dream with his head on his shoulder, and Dream almost wants to cry for a reason he can’t figure out.

“You’re so stupid,” George says to him at one point, the firelight reflecting gently in his eyes and the waves crashing against the background softly. The air smells like saltwater and fire.

And Dream just tilts his head and raises his eyebrows and asks, “What about it?”

And George looks so dumbfounded by him that he doesn’t even have a response, and Sapnap shouts out a _gross!_ before gathering and throwing piles of sand at the both of them.

…

They go out to eat one evening, and Dream spends the visit kicking at George’s feet. George kicks back, harder, and they both laugh so loudly that surrounding patrons stop eating and stare at them.

Sapnap practically bores holes into the sides of their heads, of course, but underneath the dim lighting above them, Dream is convinced that this is the happiest he’s ever going to be.

…

On the second week of the vacation, George takes him to the beach by his house again. The trip isn’t with Nick because the trip happens to be at three in the morning.

They sneak out of the house with swimsuits on underneath their jeans even though it’s freezing outside, and the half-mile walk to the beach is filled with stifled laughter and reprimands from George. Dream’s head is pounding, of course, but he took three Advil before they left and he hopes that he’ll survive the walk.

“I hate the beach,” Dream says, partly joking. Gravel crunches underneath his sneakers.

George bumps shoulders with him, leaning in as they walk. He doesn’t move away and Dream fleetingly thinks that _it’s nice,_ that _this is nice._

The moon above them is so bright that Dream can almost see George in full. He can see how his jawline cuts upwards, the way his nose points up, and even how his eyebrows shoot up before curving down.

George’s eyes crinkle as he tilts his head towards Dream. “What are you looking at, big man?”

“You,” Dream replies.

“Aw, alright.” George shakes his head and turns away. Dream winces at the movement, and George catches it. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Dream says, but his hands go instinctively towards his temples. George sees this, too, and he frowns.

“Your head?” As Dream stays silent, he continues, “Again? Clay—“

“Hey, hey.” Dream smiles softly. “It’s alright. Let’s just enjoy the—“

He furrows his eyebrows.

Suddenly, it seems, he forgot what he was going to say. He can feel the word right at the tip of his tongue, but when he reaches for it, it dissolves inside of his mouth.

There’s a burst of panic in his chest that he tries to suppress, that he tries to push away, but it remains, tight and sharp.

He can tell that George is going to say something if he doesn’t continue.

“Enjoy the—the sand and shit,” he forces out, because he’s certain that there’s _sand and shit_ at the word he’s forgotten.

George doesn’t notice anything off, and Dream is thankful for the moment.

“Sand and shit?” he says. “You’re ridiculous, love.”

Dream bumps into George this time, hard, and he veers to the left. “Love,” he teases, though his eyebrows are furrowed with the remnants of wondering what place included _sand and shit_.

It’s a place. The word.

That’s something.

George’s ears go red at the tips. “Whatever, man,” he mumbles, but perks up barely a moment later. “We’re here,” he says, grabbing Dream’s hand and pulling him towards the intended location.

Suddenly, Dream remembers the word.

_Beach_. They were going to the _beach._ He almost feels like crying.

“Look at it!” George shouts, letting go of Dream’s hand and running towards the beach until he’s just a black figure with outstretched arms. Behind him, waves crash onto the shore. It’s strange, almost, because Dream hadn’t ever thought about England having waves crash against the shore of a beach.

George waves his hands again and so Dream runs forward, crashing into George with his arms wrapped around him. He presses a kiss into George’s dimpled cheek.

“Beautiful,” he says, unsure if he means the beach or the moon or George or everything altogether.

George leans into him, Dream’s arms wrapped around his shoulders. “I’m so happy about this all, Clay,” he whispers, and Dream is almost convinced that this trip has been one, big dream and he’s going to wake up home in Orlando, thousands of miles away from George. He squeezes his shoulders as if to be sure that this moment is real.

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Me too.”

He doesn’t want to think about when this trip ends; he doesn’t want to think about how things are going to go when he lives in Orlando again and George is all the way in Brighton. He doesn’t want to think so he squeezes his eyes shut tight and holds George’s hand in his own as if this is all they’re ever going to be.

They walk along the beach, hunting seashells in the moonlight. More than once, Dream picks up a pile of seaweed and says, “What’s this?” before throwing it in George’s face.

But George finds real seashells, somehow, and pieces of sea glass stained all types of colors. He smiles, teeth white and eyes dark in the moonlight, as he pockets them.

“These are for you,” he promises with each one that he picks up, and Dream always smiles before hunting for more seaweed.

They’re further down the beach when Dream spots it: a rocky overhang with strands of moss and lichen hanging down from the sides.

“Fuck, do you see that?” he asks George, already darting towards it to find where he can begin to climb.

“What are you looking at?” George asks dumbly as if he can’t see the giant cliff in front of him, but he snickers when Dream elbows him in his side.

“Let’s climb it,” Dream says, and George nods like it’s a promise, and so that’s exactly what they do.

It takes him a moment to find where it begins, but once he does, he runs forward with a shout to George. It isn’t tall, but sharp rocks jut out from the sand, practically black in the dim lighting. He grabs George’s hand and pulls him up, and they climb up the overhang together. Dream pretends to fall twice, and George looks at him like he’s the stupidest person in the world, but Dream can tell that however hard he tries to get angry with him, George can’t.

When they make it to the top, all Dream can think to say is, “Fuck.”

The sand and ocean seem to extend in front of them for miles. Waves ripple through the sea, the top sprinkled with silver light. As the waves break into each other, the light fractures and becomes white. It’s strange, almost, how the stars above them look like they’re twinkling indefinitely. Brighton isn’t a small city, but on the beach, the stars look like they’re never going to stop shining. In Orlando, Dream can’t even see the stars on the beach from how bad the light pollution is.

“I want to live like this forever,” he whispers. George smiles into his shoulder.

“I’ve always wanted to kiss someone under the moon,” he says and he presses his lips against Dream’s with a soft hand to his cheek. In the moment, Dream can feel everything and nothing all at once.

And then suddenly: one moment, he’s fine; the next, it’s as if a lightning bolt has been struck inside his head. He’s hit with a moment of pain so sharp that his entire vision goes white, and he stumbles back.

“Dream?” George asks.

Dream keeps eyes clenched closed although it seems like everything is still so, so bright. He feels his eyes roll back in his head and he thinks, _I’m flying,_ as he stumbles back once more and his body cascades down the overhang. The last thing he hears is a desperate shout from George as he fully loses consciousness and hits the sand with a cold, hard _thud._


	3. During and After

He thinks that he wakes up in an ambulance, but he isn’t entirely sure. There’s beeping and there’s a light above him so bright that he thinks is the sun and the sterile white around him is the sand of the beach.   
He can make out people around him, but none of them are George. Suddenly, he’s struck with a second jolt of pain and everything around him starts to blur.   
“Seizing,” he hears someone say faintly. “He’s seizing!” they say, and from the tone of their voice it should be a shout, but it’s so faint in Dream’s ears that it’s barely even a whisper.   
He hears someone screaming, too, and wonders who it is, before realizing that it’s himself. Moments later, the world around him slams into a white so bright that it almost looks black.   
…  
It’s the hospital, he realizes, the second time he wakes up.   
He’s in the hospital.   
It’s perhaps the worst scenario he could be in, he thinks, eyes darting around the room wildly.   
“What the fuck,” he says aloud. He sits up halfway, confused. The brief movement hurts his head and he stills almost immediately. He feels groggy, too, head cloudy as if he froze while time around him continued.   
“Help,” he says, and then louder once more. Someone hears him, he figures, because moments later, a man in a tall white coat steps into the room. Dream doesn’t think he’s been to the doctor in over four years; definitely not since he’s been out of high school.   
The doctor stares at Clay for a moment, eyes analytical rather than soft, but then he steps forward and introduces himself as Dr. Robert White. A seizure, he says to Clay, he had a seizure. He tells Dream that George is in the waiting room and a nurse can certainly fetch him if he’d like. Dream stares at him for a bit before nodding, and then George is in the room with a glassy look in his eyes. He moves next to Dream, holds his hand under the hospital covers.   
Dr. Robert looks at them for a moment as if he’s searching for the words to say. He holds the clipboard closer to his chest and wets his lips.   
He asks Dream to go over any symptoms he’s had with a smile that looks like it should be warm but is actually anything but. Dream’s unsure if the eeriness comes from the sterile beeping around them or the doctor himself.   
So he sighs and he explains the headaches and he explains the nausea and he explains the throwing up as if it’s normal and, really, at this point, it was. And he makes that clear with a joke, that it’s practically normal at this point, but neither the doctor nor George laugh and Dr. White’s expression gradually becomes unreadable, but it’s the type of practiced unreadable that leaves Dream with a pit at the bottom of his stomach.  
He asks Clay if he has any pets and he asks Clay questions about health issues and he somehow has his file faxed from his doctor in Orlando; the one he hasn’t seen since he was eighteen.   
Dr. White asks him questions for what feel like hours as his smile gradually becomes more twisted than present. He excuses himself briefly, leaving George and Dream alone together.   
George wraps an arm around Dream, lips pressed together.  
“I wish you’d seen the doctor earlier,” is all he says, voice cracking.   
Dream wants to scoff and roll his eyes, wants to swear that this is anything but serious—a fluke, if anything—but something in the way that George’s eyes flicker make him stay silent.   
Dr. White returns with a second doctor, a woman taller than him with a warm smile and gentle eyes. Something about it makes Dream feel comforted, and he allows his body to relax.   
He’s fine.   
Dr. Rose is her name, and Dream is so thankful for her that he keeps her eyes on her even as Dr. White is talking.   
“We’d like to run some tests,” Dr. White says, and that’s the first time that Dream’s eyes jump over to him. George squeezes Dream’s hand, eyes glued to Dr. White just like they’ve been the entire time he’s been in the room. “Just a blood test and an MRI scan,” he continues. “We’ll be able to get the results to you in a few days at most.”   
He goes over costs, briefly, because Dream is an American citizen and he’s only visiting England, but they’re cheaper than Dream expects and he can afford it so he just nods bitterly and stares at the white of his bedsheets.   
It’s not normal protocol, they say, but he’s had two seizures in the past hour.   
Dr. Rose appears by the side of his bed with a wheelchair and a smile that could only be called regretful, the sides of her mouth pressed up awkwardly. “Standard procedure,” she says, and the sorry is so apparent in the sentence that she doesn’t even need to say it.   
“I’m fine,” Dream says as George helps him into the wheelchair. His cheeks and eyes burn. “I’ll be fine,” he repeats, but neither the doctors nor George say anything in response to him.   
As he’s wheeled down the hallway, he can hear George on the phone with Sapnap, voice lower than he’s ever heard it before.   
…  
He leaves the hospital with Sapnap and George, arms ripped away from both of them out of fear that they’ll try to help him. Sapnap has a pair of sweats and a hoodie for Clay that he puts on in the hospital room and he shoves the hood so far over his head that he can barely see anything in front of him.   
“You okay, man?” Sapnap asks, and Dream doesn’t reply out of fear that he’s going to start crying over how embarrassing this entire moment was.   
Dr. Rose stands in the doorway as they’re leaving, arms folded against her chest. Glossy brown hair falls against her back. She looks so normal that it’s almost unnerving. “We’ll give you guys a call in a few days,” she says tenderly, smiling, and it’s almost even more unnerving how she can smile so warmly for someone who works in a hospital. For someone who gives people MRIs and CAT scans, scans that surely have more bad results than good.   
“Thank you,” Dream says, only because she’s Dr. Rose and not Dr. White, voice cracking.   
He doesn’t miss the way the warmth is dropped from her smile as she looks down and he doesn’t miss the way that Sapnap looks at him, eyes darkening suddenly and sharply, and he doesn’t miss the way George’s nails dig into his left arm or how his lips tremble with what Dream can only call fear.   
…  
The call comes early in the morning on a Saturday, when Dream is lying in bed with a bag of ice pressed against his head with George next to him, book in hands. George is the one who picks up the phone.   
Dr. White called them to come in later that afternoon, and that’s what Dream notices first; that they didn’t give them results on the phone.   
That’s the first thing that leaves an unsettled feeling in his stomach.   
He almost doesn’t want to say it out loud, out of fear to make this whole entire situation real, but then he looks at George and says, “They wouldn’t normally call me in, would they?”   
But George just goes all quiet and picks at his sleeves. “It’ll be okay,” he says like it’s a promise, and that’s the second thing to leave an unsettled feeling in Dream’s stomach: that it’s George, and not him, who says that it’ll be okay.   
…  
Dream’s world comes to a slow stop when he hears the words glioblastoma, brain tumor, and stage four.   
He can feel himself shaking, suddenly, but it’s as if he’s alienated from his body. He finds it difficult to move his hands and he feels almost like a spectator, watching this unfold from far up above.   
Next to him, George stiffens, but Dream doesn’t even have it in himself to look at him.   
Dr. White and Dr. Rose are sitting in front of them, hands folded, and Dream feels like this is some kind of sick joke—what kind of doctors tag team to reveal diagnoses, like good cop and bad cop?   
He wants to say this, he wants to say this and chuckle, because there’s no way that this is real. But George tugs and his sleeve and then Dr. White is sliding a glossy photocopy of his MRI and blood work across the desk.   
Abnormal amount of white blood cells, is what he first hears Dr. Rose says, and then he glances down at the MRI scan and he feels his blood run entirely cold.   
It’s his brain, he knows, but there’s a giant fucking white mass in the very center of the image, and he has to jerk his chair back and take in a deep, heaving breath.   
George is the one who talks first; he doesn’t even look at Dream as he begins. “What are you recommending we do?” he says, and his accent is oddly posher than it normally is, like he’s trying to retain some form of composure in front of these doctors.   
We, Dream thinks. What are you recommending we do?  
Dr. White clears his throat. “I-I’m—“ And Dream doesn’t miss the way that he stumbles with his words, the way his eyes flicker over to them, uncomfortable, before jumping back. He clears his throat a second time.   
“Right now, our recommendation is that you”—he’s looking directly at Clay as he says this—“fly back to Orlando.” He pulls out a slip of paper and slides it across the table.   
A referral, Dr. Rose explains for him.   
It’s a referral to a doctor who specializes in glioblastoma tumors in Orlando that they know personally. Someone who they recommend. Dream lets out a low whimper in his throat as he hears the word glioblastoma.   
He sits there like he’s waiting for a punchline, waiting to be told that this is just a big joke, but the doctors keep talking and George’s expression gradually becomes tenser and tenser, eyebrows drawn together so tightly it’s as if he’s trying not to cry.   
“H-how quickly does a cancer like this—spread?“   
And it’s George who says this, still not looking at Dream, but this time, he’s not looking at the doctors, either. His lips are pursed and his eyes are trained on his hands folded in his lap.   
“Stage four cancers are not always entirely hopeless,” Dr. White says, and Dream feels a deep lurch in his stomach.   
He knows that George knows that Dr. White avoided answering the question, and there’s something so ironic about that to Dream that he lets out a dark snort.   
Fuck, he thinks, hands icy.   
His results are faxed to the doctor in Orlando who Dr. Rose and Dr. White know and Dream is handed a clipboard of information that George holds for him.   
When they’re finally wrapping up, when Dr. Rose’s smile is no longer warm or even there, when there’s a very rather sad twist to Dr. White’s mouth, Dream asks, “If I’d seen the doctor earlier, would it have—would it have progressed as quickly as it did?”   
Words like progressed feel heavy in his mouth. They feel like they don’t belong there; like they belong in medical textbooks and in the words of hospital staff.  
It’s the first thing he’s said this morning, and for what seems like the first time since Dream’s met these two doctors, both appear at a loss of what to say.   
What feels like a full minute passes before Dr. White runs a hand through the back of his head and begins speaking.   
“There’s a slim possibility of that, Clay,” he finally slowly says. “Glioblastomas are nasty cancers. They progress very, very quickly regardless of what stage they’re diagnosed in,” and him saying that is almost worse than the answer just being yes.   
How hopeless the situation really is slowly dawns over Dream, and there’s a burning in his eyes that’s so sharp that it almost hurts. For a moment, it feels like he’s forgotten how to breathe; the air that he sucks in feels cold and unwelcoming.   
“Alright,” he says slowly, looking away, looking anywhere but at Dr. Rose or Dr. White or George.   
George is the one who says thank you, George is the one who collects all of the information the doctors gave to Clay, he’s the one who shakes their hands, and he’s the one who leads Clay out of the hospital by his elbow.   
As they leave, Clay has to empty the contents of his stomach into the bushes that line the sidewalk.   
He continues to retch long after he has no bile left in his stomach, as if the more of his stomach he empties, the less of himself that will remain.  
…   
“What the fuck do you mean, brain tumor?” Dream hears Sapnap shout as he collapses next to the porcelain bowl in George’s bathroom, head against knees and hands against ears.   
He can hear George’s hushed voice, can tell when Sapnap tone sobers very quickly and violently, and it all feels so unnatural.   
“Fuck,” he says aloud, hands still pressed against his ears so that his voice sounds warped when he hears it. He slams a fist into the wall and then again, and again, and again.   
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”   
…   
So he books a flight home.   
Rather, George books a flight to Orlando for both of them and Sapnap starts looking at apartments and sends a downpayment to a woman before he’s even told his landlord that he’s going to move out. George calls the Orlando doctor for him and books the appointment before even telling Dream that he’s going to call him.   
He doesn’t want to think about how things are going to go when he lives in Orlando again and George is all the way in Brighton.   
Bitterly, Dream thinks, at least I don’t have to worry about that anymore.   
…   
He spends the night before the flight in bed with George, his head in his lap and George’s hands running through his hair.   
“It’s okay, baby,” George says, like he’s so certain of what Dream is thinking.   
And Dream is almost angry just then because George has never called him baby before.   
If he wasn’t sick, George wouldn’t have called him that, and he feels cheated of this moment, as if it’s been ripped away from him and returned in the cruelest way possible.  
“I have cancer,” he says, voice steady even though everything else inside of him feels broken.   
The words burn like acid against his tongue.   
…   
They fly back to Orlando together.   
Before the flight, Sapnap got into an argument with his landlord about moving out before his lease was up. He went out on George’s balcony, but Dream still heard the words brain cancer and best friend.   
Sapnap later joins them in the car and his eyes are red, but Dream doesn’t point it out and neither does George.   
The drive to the airport is quiet and despite how loud the airport is, it feels almost even more isolating.   
The airport is bustling with all types of people, people who are smiling and laughing and people who are quiet and somber and all Dream can do is wonder if anyone else in the airport has just been diagnosed with brain cancer. He wonders if anyone else feels as empty as he does.   
They give him the window seat and he sleeps almost the whole flight. It’s a direct flight, there’s no layover or stops, and Dream doesn’t even think to ask how they purchased tickets for something like that.   
When they arrive at his apartment, he stumbles up the steps and George and Sapnap stay as if it’s all been decided on already.   
And in some ways, perhaps it has.   
Just not with him.   
As he tries to unlock his door, his key falls to the ground. He reaches back down to pick the key back up, but he only ends up dropping it again and further away. He stares at it for a second and something ignites in his chest and he shouts, “Fuck!” and slams a fist against the door.   
George is who picks up the key and gently pushes him aside, and at that, Dream lets out a choked sob. He moves past George when the door is open, shoulder slamming into his, before moving to his bedroom and locking the door. Someone knocks at some point, but Dream doesn’t say anything and whoever it is moves away from his door.   
He sits down on his bed, chest heaving and body shaking. He presses his hands to his cheeks, almost surprised to see them come back wet.   
Dream lies down on his bed, curled up with his knees pulled to his chest, and he feels as if his body is slowly disintegrating into something more. He closes his eyes and almost expects to be gone when he wakes up the next morning, but he’s still there and he’s still functioning and that somehow makes it all worse than it could be.   
…   
He streams that next morning, streams with Wilbur and Tommy and Karl, and Tommy’s the only one who asks where Sapnap and George are. If the others notice, they don’t say anything.   
But Dream chokes on his drink anyway and starts coughing so hard that it’s difficult to stop. He has to mute because George comes running in, eyes wild and afraid in a way that Dream has never seen them before.   
He points to his water and he says, “I’m streaming.”   
George’s shoulders fall but the look in his eyes remain, like he’s on edge and he’s always going to be.  
But he smiles a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes and he pulls up a crate next to Dream and unmutes the call and says hello. Tommy starts shouting and Karl starts laughing so hard that he can’t breathe, and when Sapnap joins, he starts laughing even more. No one asks why they’re together, and the stream on the server is a moment of peace Dream didn’t know that he needed.   
Because in the afternoon, after the stream is done, George has called an uber even though Dream has a car and he holds the stack of paperwork in his hands that Dr. Rose and Dr. White had given him.   
The doctor that they meet has neither the warmth Dr. Rose had nor the attempted casualness that Dr. White had.   
She has a clinical expression devoid of much of anything else and a tone of voice that remains level, somehow reminding Dream of the building that they’re in, which is small and white and smells like lemon bleach and antiseptic.   
She seats them in her office quickly, which is starkly white like the rest of the building but has toys and blocks in the corner. Dream feels a pang in his chest at the thought of a child young enough to play with those toys sitting in the same chair that he’s sitting in for the same reason that he’s here.   
He wonders if they knew why they were here; he wonders if they knew that they were going to die.   
“Hello, Clay,” she says as he and George sit down in front of her. She has a folder with his first and last name on it and her hands are flattened on top of his. “I’m Dr. Garcia,” she says, and then she apologizes for this being the situation that they meet, but she doesn’t smile and the sorrow that Clay expects to be in her eyes isn’t there. Her tone and expression remind him vaguely of Dr. White, with that practiced unreadability that still began to break nearing the end of the visit.   
She pulls out more papers and she discusses costs and she discusses how much of his insurance will pay for treatments and visits and Dream just nods and nods and nods because he’s wearing a fucking Supreme hoodie and she probably thinks he’s just like every other privileged white kid even if that isn’t even entirely true.   
She pulls out his MRI scan, next, and Dream feels something sloshing inside of him when he looks back at that white mass in the center of his head. She glances at him and then the mass.   
Dr. Garcia, once again, flattens her hand over the image, partly covering the mass. Dream wonders if she does it more for her benefit than his. Wonders if this is a trick doctors use.   
“I believe that Dr. White went over your MRI with you,” she begins.  
Both Clay and George nod. Dream doesn’t know if he can handle to hear the words brain tumor or cancer again, but what Dr. Garcia says next is somehow worse than either of those combined.   
“Looking at treatment methods, tumor removal is usually the traditional treatment method, combined with chemotherapy and radiation. But,” and her lips purse, “looking at the location of this tumor, the best bet would be to remove only a portion of it before focusing on targeted chemotherapy and radiation.”   
And Dream hates this, hates how unclear doctors are when they don’t want to make him feel hopeless even though he has every right to.   
“What are you saying?” is all he says, voice darkening.   
“Listen, Clay,” and there’s that monotone, flattened tone again, “please understand that we’re not saying that this tumor is completely inoperable.”   
Next to him, George makes a soft sound in his throat. He’s the one who reaches for Dream’s hand.   
“But if you’d look at the positioning of it…”   
Dream looks to where she’s pointing and listens to her words, but everything she says begins to blur together to mean the same thing that he doesn’t know how to listen anymore.  
Brain tumor.   
Stage four.   
Length of survival increases with treatment.  
Difficult to operate on, but treatment isn’t hopeless.   
But it is.   
When he straight-out asks what the survival rates are of patients with glioblastomas, that’s when Dr. Garcia actually lowers her head and avoids his expression. Her bangs shadow over her eyes.   
“The average survival rate for our patients here is usually over eighteen months,” she finally says, almost like it’s something to be proud of, but the way that she stares away from both of them gives away that it isn’t.   
She continues and says that the median age of those suffering is in the sixties, and that the young mind is young and resilient and he isn’t even twenty-five so there is hope; he is young and so there is hope.   
How much? he wants to ask, but he already knows.  
There isn’t much.   
He’s going to die; he’s going to die quickly and violently and painfully, and what is the difference, really, of six months to twelve months, of three years to five, of years filled with hospital visits and treatments that don’t actually treat.   
She says that she’d like to attempt to operate. She says that she’d like to schedule an operation date and schedule rounds of chemo and radiation, and she asks if he’d like to think on it, and he says no.   
Dream can tell that she’s surprised at that by the way her eyebrows raise slightly.   
“Clay…” George says, voice tight.   
Dream looks directly to Dr. Garcia. “How much of it can you remove?”   
“Looking at the MRI, most likely around ten to twenty-five percent of the mass. Hopefully, radiation will be able to shrink more of it.”   
“That’s not going to happen,” he says, and that’s when her composure breaks. She flinches, hard, and then gathers the papers as if that’s all that’s left to do even though all of them know that isn’t true.   
Dream looks down. He swallows, hard. “We can schedule an operation.”   
He should call his mom. He should call his dad. He should call his siblings.   
This shouldn’t be something that he decides by himself.  
He knows this.   
But he hasn’t spoken to his siblings in a year, his mom in two, his dad in three.   
“Clay,” George repeats, but Dream stares straight ahead.   
“Schedule it. Charge my insurance. I don’t care,” he says and stands up, his chair screeching back.   
He looks at George, almost hoping that he can see how much fear is really boiling up inside of him.   
…   
Sapnap is the one who calls his parents.   
Their visit comes a day before the operation was scheduled for, and the moment Dream sees his mother’s car pull in front of his driveway, he and Sapnap get into a screaming match.   
Sapnap is over at his apartment often, now; he’s fully moved to Orlando and Dream hates it. He stays over at the apartment during the day and leaves George and Dream alone at night, and they spend most of it lying together on Dream’s bed, watching television with Patches and pretending as if everything is normal when they’re together.   
He had his PC shipped down so he streams from Dream’s guest room; he knows that George has a friend watching his pets. He knows that he misses them and one morning he says, “You can go back home, George,” and George just shakes his head and doesn’t say anything else. As if Dream doesn’t need an explanation.   
I do, he wants to get around to saying, but he never does.  
Sapnap flees out the backdoor as Dream’s parents ring the doorbell, and George is already gone—“getting groceries,” God; he is such an idiot.  
“You need to do this,” Sapnap shouts as the door slams shut behind him, and Clay places his head in his hands.   
The doorbell rings, again, and Dream can see a huddle of three people standing together. He runs a hand through his hair and presses a thumb against his temple—there are no more headaches, but there is a headache that doesn’t leave anymore—and swings his front door open.   
His mother stands there, eyes bagged and lips with the same red lipstick that she always wears and blonde hair plaited against her back. She looks tired.   
Next to her, his dad towers over her, hand on her shoulder awkwardly. His dark hair is now salt-and-peppered, more grey than not, and there are more lines under his eye than Dream remembered him having.  
They were married for ten years, fought for nine, and divorced for eight. It’s a strange picture to see them together, especially so civil and calm.   
His oldest sister is with them, too, hair blonde and face freckled like his, though she’s short like his mother.   
Almost like Dream had expected, she’s the one to speak first.   
“Baby,” she whispers, and she crushes him against her shoulders despite the height difference.   
The guilt strikes him in his chest quickly and suddenly, and he feels himself start to break in his sister’s arms.   
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispers against her hair.   
His dad places a rough hand on his shoulder. “It’s alright, son,” he says.   
His mother looks at him very carefully and then asks, “A brain tumor?”   
They go inside and Dream makes them coffee even though his sister takes over halfway through because he’s made coffee maybe once in his life and absolutely hated it.   
They sit down on his couch and he explains the headaches and the seizures and the nausea and the vomiting. He explains the trip to England and he explains the surgery.   
He says glioblastoma and stage four and then he doesn’t need to explain anymore. From the sharp inhale his mother takes, the look in his father’s eyes, the way his sister’s hands shake, he knows that he doesn’t need to.  
They don’t talk about his surgery tomorrow and they don’t talk about how they’re going to tell his other siblings.  
They talk about YouTube and they talk about his career and they talk about money. They talk about Mom’s new boyfriend and they talk about Dad’s new fiancée and they talk about how his sister graduated from grad school. They talk about how his brother started middle school and they talk about how his youngest sister started high school. They talk about her internship and they talk about Patches and they talk about George. His father doesn’t have the reaction he thought that he’d have; a nod of acceptance rather than a grimace of dissent. His mother smiles for him and his sister asks for pictures and he shows them the pictures before that night at the beach so that he can remind himself that once, things were normal.   
“A brain tumor,” his mother repeats nearing the end of the visit, and he almost expects her to continue and say, Now, that isn’t ideal, like back when he was a young child and he was ill.   
A fever, she would say as she wrung out a cool dishcloth to place on his forehead, now, that isn’t ideal, now is it?   
But this time, there is no fever and there is no cool dishcloth.   
There’s a headache that’s lasted for months and there’s a tumor in the center of his brain.   
…   
After his parents leave, he doesn’t cry, but he does sit down on his couch with his knees pulled to his chest for what feels like hours.  
He bites his nails until his fingers are left red and raw and he thinks, very briefly, how much he wishes that this visit hadn’t happened.   
In a way, he would’ve been fine; he would’ve been fine to die after not seeing his family in years.   
But now he’s seen them and the realization that he’s never going to watch his siblings grow up sits like a heavy weight dead center in his stomach.   
In a way, he thinks that it would be better to die with regret rather than hopeless desire.   
George comes home from the store and sits down on the couch next to Dream, his head in the crook of his shoulder.   
“How are you, big man?” George asks.   
“Wanna stream,” Dream says softly.   
George holds his hand against his chest and gently pulls at his fingers.   
“Okay,” he says finally.   
They text Sapnap and they stream, George in one room and Dream in another, Sapnap in his apartment that’s three miles away. George’s comments have begun to flood with questions about the new background, but neither he nor Sapnap nor Dream say anything about it. Sapnap mentions that he moved to Orlando in a stream, but—other than the occasional tweet about it—it didn’t blow up as much as Dream was worried that it would. They call in one of their Discord servers, and Tommy and Wilbur end up joining for the stream.   
Dream can hear Tommy’s mother shout at him to go to bed at one point, after they’ve been playing together for what must have been a few hours, and he stills at that. Barely a moment later, he can feel his face crumple, like his face is made out of clay and soft fingers are molding the features.  
He has to mute himself on Discord and the stream and he sits still in his chair, hot tears streaming down his cheeks.   
The doctor’s words echo in his head.   
The young mind is more resilient than you might think. There’s hope, Clay.  
He shuts off his computer and ends the stream without another word.   
He climbs into bed and pushes the comforter over his head and, for what feels like the first time in his life, prays to a God he’d never even learned to believe in.   
…   
He rides with Sapnap, not George, to the clinic. Sapnap drives his car and almost hits Dream’s mailbox, and he wants to say something about it but something stops him.   
That morning, Dream wakes up to #WhereDidDreamGo trending on Twitter and to George sitting at the dining table, looking as if he hadn’t slept in months.   
Dream makes him black coffee because he doesn’t have any tea even though he hates the smell and he makes him pancakes because it’s the only thing he knows how to make.   
“I’ll be okay,” he says to George as he places the plate of pancakes in front of him.   
George is quiet for a very long moment before he says, “Sapnap’s going to go with you.” He looks away from Dream as he says this, his voice fragile and cold like frosted glass.  
I’m sorry, Dream wants to say, I’m so sorry.  
He didn’t want to put George in this position.   
George wasn’t supposed to fly back to Orlando and they weren’t supposed to fall asleep together in bed every night underneath tangled sheets and Dream wasn’t supposed to have a giant mass in the center of his head.   
So he whispers, “I’m sorry,” as he gathers his jacket and if George hears it, he doesn’t say anything.   
Outside, the air is crisp against his cheeks.   
He climbs in the car with Sapnap and Sapnap greets him and almost hits his mailbox and that’s when they get on their way, shitty pop playing out of the car speakers that do anything but fill the bubble of silence surrounding them.   
“I’m—“ Sapnap begins, but Dream pinches the bridge of his nose and says, “Don’t.”   
“Don’t?” Sapnap asks.   
“Don’t say it,” Dream whispers, feeling like everything about him is starting to crack at the edges; starting to fizzle away like the ends of a log in a fire.   
“I’m…hungry…?” Sapnap offers. “Can we…stop at…McDonald’s?”   
“Fuck, man. Sorry.” Dream snorts because he doesn’t have the energy to laugh. “I just—shit,” he sighs.   
Sapnap stops at the worst Burger King in Orlando even though he said McDonald’s and he buys both a burger and ten chicken nuggets even though it’s barely eight in the morning.   
He drives with one hand and almost hits the truck in front of them as he eats, but all he does is chuckle and give Dream an eye-roll.   
“How are you?” he asks ten minutes into the drive, mouth full of french fries.   
“Scared,” Dream replies honestly.   
Sapnap nods.   
“I’m glad that—George is here, I guess,” he admits. “I feel bad that he came with, though. Neither of you should’ve done that.”   
“I’ve been talking about moving here for a while,” Sapnap says but when Dream points out that George hasn’t, he falls silent.   
“He’s liked you for a while, you know,” he says, moments later.   
Dream presses his thumb into the glass pane of the car. A print is left on the window.   
He didn’t know that. He’s surprised that Sapnap does.   
“He told me, months ago. I think he’s—he’s happy to help you, Clay.”   
Dream stares at the print of his thumb. He wonders how long it’ll stay there. Wonders if it’ll be enough for him to be remembered when he’s gone, when his body is one with the Earth and wind and his soul is intertwined with everything else.   
It’s a stupid thought, he thinks.   
“I’m glad to have you as a friend, Nick,” he says tentatively.   
“I wouldn’t give it up for the world,” Sapnap replies, voice sincere.   
You should, Dream thinks. Before everything around me turns to shit.   
Sapnap glances at him from the sides of his eyes. “It’s inevitable, you know,” he says carefully. “What happens to us all.”   
Dream’s eyes trail the highway. He digs his nails into his left arm. “Yeah,” he whispers.   
“But that’s not what matters,” Sapnap continues. “What matters is what you’ve done with what you’ve been given. And, Clay, I think you’ve done a lot.”   
Dream stares back out the window. He blinks, hard. “I prayed for the first time last night,” he says.   
Neither he nor Sapnap are religious. He regrets saying it almost immediately.   
But Sapnap just asks, “Did it help?”   
“No,” Dream says, curt tone.   
The drive is silent the rest of the way to the clinic.   
…   
Before he enters the clinic, he calls George while Sapnap stands outside of the car.   
“Hey,” he says when George picks up, sweatered arms wrapped around himself. He’s cold, but he isn’t entirely sure it’s from the weather.   
“Hi,” George says gently.   
“I’m afraid,” Dream says, eyes closing, and this time he knows that this fear isn’t childlike; it’s harsh and it’s real, no longer a monster under his bed but rather a real monster standing in the center of his bedroom with sharp, dangerous teeth and eyes made of red, angry fire.   
“It’ll be alright,” George says, and he may be right.   
But what about after, Dream wants to say. What about after this?  
He doesn’t.   
His eyes open and he says, “Okay.”   
George takes in a breath. “I love you,” he whispers.   
Dream purses his lips.   
He turns to look back out the window. “I love you, too,” he replies, voice too hard to be soft but too soft to be hard.  
He presses down on the end call button.   
As he enters the clinic with Sapnap, his gaze is hardened.   
…  
They didn’t get as much of the tumor as they wanted.   
No one tells Dream this exactly, but when he wakes up, he can hear the doctors’ hushed whispers outside of his room.   
“It’s bad, Helen,” he hears one of the doctors say.   
Through the glass, one of them sees Dream’s eyes open. They go silent immediately and both look away.   
He feels too tired to keep his eyes open, but the doctor’s words remain in his head.  
It’s bad.   
…  
He’s escorted out of the hospital in a wheelchair by his mother, but the moment is blurry in his mind.   
“George,” he hears himself say, but his mother hushes him and helps him into her car.   
Oddly enough, he thinks that he can hear her start to cry as she drives him down the highway.   
…  
He starts radiation treatments three weeks later.   
Dr. Garcia says that they want to try to shrink the tumor down, to try surgery again, but she doesn’t say anything about the resilience of the young mind again.   
As Dream is standing by the doorway, he looks at her and says, “I’m so fucking resilient, right?”   
He doesn’t mean for his words to be as harsh as they are.   
He stumbles out of the doorway and meets George in the hall. He throws up on the concrete outside.   
“What are we going to do about the Dream Team?” he asks George as he heaves.  
George seems taken aback but the question. “Don’t worry about that,” he says quietly.  
But what if it’s all that I have to worry about right now, he wants to say.   
“We need to stream again,” he says.  
“When you’re feeling better, maybe,” George says, hand running through Dream’s cropped hair.   
When the uber stops in front of his apartment, he has to throw up outside and in the blocks of grass there, too.   
“What are we going to tell them,” Dream says as bile from his stomach splatters against the grass, angry tears cropping up into his eyes. “What are we going to tell them when I can’t stream any more—“   
“It’s okay,” George says, but it isn’t.  
It isn’t okay.   
But George just repeats, “It’s okay, Clay,” and holds Dream tightly in his arms even though they’re standing outside in bright daylight.  
“You know that it isn’t,” Dream says later that night when they’re sitting on the couch together. He has a bucket next to him now for when he has to get sick.   
George glances at him as if it’s a question, but from the look in his eyes, Dream knows that he can tell what he means.   
…  
He’s on his fifth round of radiation and his fourth of chemotherapy when Dr. Garcia sits him down in front of him and says, “From the recent MRIs, it doesn’t look like the tumor is responding to any of the treatments we have tried.”   
He’s on his fifth round of radiation and fourth of chemotherapy when Dr. Garcia fingers the cross necklace that rests on her chest and pulls more photocopies of his most recent MRI from her desk. She shows him the mass and then draws her finger across the page to where a much smaller white dot rests on the opposite from where the original mass is.   
It’s difficult to operate it, he remembers, from where it lays on your brain.   
“It’s spreading,” he states, voice so much shakier, so much more tired, so much more finished, than he’s ever heard it before.   
She folds her hands across the folder. “It’s common with many glioblastoma patients,” she says, as if it’s supposed to be reassuring.   
George is in the hallway, again, because it got too hard for Dream to see George next to him whenever he met with Dr. Garcia.   
“It’s for sure, then,” Dream says. Dr. Garcia knots her eyebrows together. He stares at her for a minute too long and she looks away.   
“I think—“ He swallows as his voice catches. “I think that this isn’t working,” he says finally, voice tight.   
Dr. Garcia’s head tilts down. The expression she wears is raw, and it’s a strange thing.   
“With our glioblastoma patients, it tends to spread quickly. There will be more seizures, more headaches, and sometimes a loss of cognitive function. Treatments, at best, only help to minimize these symptoms. Over long periods of time—think years, Clay, years—“   
“Glioblastoma growth almost always outpaces treatment,” Dream mumbles, finishing her sentence. “Yeah, I read the Wikipedia page.”   
“We can offer medical treatments to help manage pain for our patients who chose to discontinue tumor-addressing treatments,” she continues, just as if she hadn’t heard him. She stands up, shifting a pile of papers on her desk. “Clay, before you make this decision, I would like for you to discuss this with people in your life who are important to you. I’m not going to let you make this call today.”   
“I know what I want,” Dream says, eyes trained ahead of him.  
Dr. Garcia turns again, papers still clutched to her chest, but her eyes narrow as she looks at him and then away. They’re oddly glassy.   
“Call your parents,” she says, and she turns away from him as if to signify that this conversation is done.   
Dream waits for her to say anything else, but she doesn’t.   
He stands up.   
He meets George in the hall.   
He throws up in the bathroom of the clinic instead of the cold concrete outside.   
He counts it as some sort of small victory despite the never-ending pounding in his head.   
…  
George gives him the bag of sea glass from the beach, and Dream keeps it in his sweatshirt pocket constantly.   
“I’m never going to get rid of this now,” he says to George, and he laughs like he’s kidding, and George laughs harder, but Dream almost wishes that he knew how serious he is.   
…  
He’s stopped streaming almost completely now. He hasn’t addressed it, hasn’t addressed the tweets, hasn’t addressed his YouTube channel that is steadily losing both followers and income.   
Sapnap and George stream enough to make up for it, but they haven’t answered the questions from the fans or even questions from the others on the server.   
I’m lonely without you in exile, Tommy DMs him on Discord one morning.   
Dream sends back a :/ and the conversation ends there, but he can tell that there’s more behind Tommy’s word. That they don’t just come from him.   
Dream decides to tell Sapnap that he’s stopping treatment first because it seems easier to do than anything else.   
He takes a taxi to Sapnap’s house while George is napping. Before he’d left, George was on the phone with someone about his visa, voice loud and tone angry. Dream didn’t hear what he said, but he knows that George was somehow allowed to get his visa extended. He didn’t say for how long.   
Dream is almost glad that he didn’t hear him.  
On the way to Sapnap’s house, he has the taxi driver stop at a pizza place so he can pick up some food for Sapnap.   
He’s not supposed to drive anymore.  
Back before, and even when he was younger, he used to take night drives around his neighborhood. He would drive to the beach and to through cities and on the highway, windows down with wind whipping through his hair and music floating through the air.   
He stares out of the uber as the dark scenery flashes by him.  
He misses it more than he thought that he would.   
Dream knocks on Sapnap’s door with three boxes of pizzas in his hands that he can’t eat and tears in his eyes that he doesn’t allow to fall.   
They get high that night, and it’s probably the first time Dream’s felt his headache dim from the last four months. They sit there on his couch, pizza boxes between them, one and a half completely demolished by Sapnap and maybe one or two slices eaten by Dream altogether.   
“Treatment isn’t working,” Dream tells Sapnap. He swallows, hard. “I’m going to…” And he looks back out Sapnap’s window even though it’s completely dark outside. “I’m going to stop treatment.”   
Sapnap, to his credit, seems to understand. He lowers the slice of pizza that he holds and says, “Okay.”  
He moves forward and presses two hands against Dream’s back in a gentle hug. “I’m sorry, dude,” he says, and it’s the first time he’s ever said sorry about anything relating to the brain tumor. Normally, it would make him angry; normally, he’s sick of the pity, but he closes his eyes and accepts both Sapnap’s embrace and his apology.   
He thinks that Sapnap is okay with this, that he understands that this is the way things are going to be, and he’s grateful for it.   
But early that morning, before the birds have even begun to chirp, he hears Sapnap in the bathroom. From his position on the floor, he can just partly see through the crack in the bathroom door: Sapnap is standing in the center of his bathroom, sobbing.   
…  
Dream sends out a tweet that he’s going to take some time away from social media due to personal reasons. He doesn’t say for how long.   
Later, a photo of George standing outside the clinic Orlando is leaked.   
…  
He meets with his lawyer while he sets up his legal will and testament.   
If she notices how much his shoulders shake as begins to write, she doesn’t say anything.   
…  
He tells his family when he invites them over for dinner.   
George stays over, too, but they just order Chinese food because neither of them can cook very well at all. His youngest brother and youngest sister come, too, and he sends them off to his bedroom. They harass Tommy and Wilbur on Discord. His sister plays Minecraft with Tommy while his brother watches, and it feels strange to Dream that he never knew that his sister was a fan of him.   
He thinks he could’ve done something, could’ve had her talk to him.  
It’s too late to take it back, though.   
Lately, Dream feels like he dwells on a lot of the what-ifs and should-haves. He mentions it to Dr. Garcia during one of their visits and she says that it’s normal.   
The remainder of her unsaid sentence hangs in the air.  
It’s normal.  
It’s normal for those who are dying.   
And so during dinner, while Dream has a full plate of food he’s never going to eat, while his mother is smiling politely at George, while his sister is laughing at a joke his father made, he tells them that the treatments have stopped working. He tells them that he’s going to stop treatment entirely.   
He hears his mother’s gasp, he sees the way his sister’s face pales, he hears how his father’s fork clatters against his plate, but he mostly sees the look George wears.   
It’s a look he never thought he’d have to see his best friend, the person that he loves the most in the world, ever wear.   
And they knew it was coming; everybody knew that eventually, the treatments would stop working, but he can feel the shock that they wear as if it’s brand-new.   
His mother starts crying and his father looks at him, and Dream almost expects to see the look he used to give him when he’d upset his mother, the one that screams, “Now you’ve done it.”   
But when he catches his father’s eyes, there’s no such look. Instead, his eyes are filled completely with glimmering tears. His father nods at him and pushes his glasses up his nose. The light from the kitchen light reflects off of his glasses and then Dream can no longer see his eyes at all.   
As Dream glances up, he sees his youngest brother and youngest sister standing in the doorway of the living room.   
He can’t even look them in the eyes as they begin to cry.   
Later, when his parents and siblings are scattered across the couch and asleep, he lies down on his best next to George. This time, he’s the one who has George’s head in his lap, he’s the one who has his hands running through his hair slowly.   
“What am I going to do?” George whispers softly, soft yellow lighting from Dream’s lamp cast across his face. It’s the first time he’s referenced himself in this entire situation.   
“I don’t know,” Dream says. He turns away. “I wish that I had some really smart thing to say to you, George”—and George snorts at that and it gives Dream a small, self-satisfied smile—“but I don’t.”   
They lie like that for a few minutes.   
“Dr. Garcia said that it’s going to get worse,” he says.   
George presses a gentle kiss to his forehead and turns out the lamp. He doesn’t say anything else for the night of the night.   
Nearing four AM, when George is fast asleep and Dream is lying across from him, he runs a hand across his forehead.  
“I’m sorry,” he whispers to the darkness, shame filling his stomach in thick tendrils. “I’m so fucking sorry.”   
He reaches into his sweatshirt pocket and holds a piece of sea glass in his palm.  
Nearing six, he makes his way to his guest bedroom with his phone. He opens the camera app. By eight in the morning, he sends two different files to Sapnap in an email.  
One for you, he writes. And one for George.  
Sapnap doesn’t ask him what they’re for.  
They both know.  
…  
He’s coerced into a call with Tommy and Wilbur and some of the other SMP members, and Sapnap and George are in the room with him when they call from the server.   
It’s oddly quiet when Dream joins. He coughs, once, as if to signify that he’s here, and that’s when the silence breaks.   
“There’s something wrong with Dream, isn’t there?” Tommy asks. His camera is on, but his gaze stays focused down and nowhere near the computer.  
No, Dream wants to say even though it’s true, but his voice sticks to his throat so tightly that he can’t get anything out.   
“It’s alright, Tommy,” Sapnap says for him.   
Wilbur’s camera is on, and like Sapnap, his gaze is calculating.   
Dream looks away from the camera. His webcam isn’t on, but it’s difficult to look at those who have theirs on. “I’m going to be stepping away from the SMP,” he says. “Indefinitely.”   
There are gasps and there are questions and it’s all so much at once that all he can think to do is sit there, silent.   
“I’m sorry.”   
He doesn’t entirely know what he’s sorry for.   
Sorry for leaving the SMP, sorry for George, sorry for himself, sorry for getting cancer, sorry for dying.   
Maybe a mixture of everything.   
They couldn’t know that, though.   
He tells Wilbur later that night, and Wilbur stays silent on the phone.   
“You can tell them,” Dreams says to him. “After.”   
“After?” Wilbur asks, and then there’s a pause. Dream can hear the oh before Wilbur even begins to say it.   
He says thank you to Wilbur, and he knows that Wilbur knows that the thank you isn’t just for this conversation, and he ends the call.   
He and George later sit together on his couch and George turns to look at him. Now, their couch visits are silent. They sit together, Dream almost always leaning into George, but the laughter that used to accompany them when they sit together has long since stopped.  
“What’s on your mind?” he asks, voice shaped in that special way of his. He lets out a gentle breath.   
Dream considers this for a moment, biting down on his lip.   
“That I’m dying,” he replies, voice rougher than he intends for it to be.   
“You’re not dying,” George says sadly, and it’s such a blatant lie that Dream almost wants to scoff.  
But he just pulls his beanie over his ears and stares out the window. Rain droplets trace down the pane slowly.   
“You’re not,” George repeats, but his words are weak.   
“Okay, George,” Dream mutters.   
The words sound bitter even to himself.   
…  
He meets with Dr. Garcia with George the next morning, and he officially chooses to end treatment.   
Dr. Garcia prescribes steroids for the headaches and says that there’s not much else to be done.   
Dream steps out to go to the bathroom, and as he’s coming back in, he hears Dr. Garcia say to George, very quietly, “When it comes, the deterioration will happen very quickly and suddenly. We need to be prepared.”   
Her voice is not much more than a mumble, but Dream is a mere speck of dust, and so her voice is like an ocean wave crashing against a tiny hill of sand that never had any chance to survive in the first place.   
…  
One morning, Dream admits to George that he’s never seen snow.  
The very next moment, after George asks Dream where in America is it the snowiest, he books a cabin in the mountains of New York.   
He calls Dr. Garcia and they get clearance to go, and the flight is horrible but the cabin is wonderful. They bring Sapnap and they do a couple of streams; no gaming but just them talking and laughing and joking, and it’s nice.   
He isn’t nauseous for much of the trip: and so they build snowmen, and so they go sledding, and so they drink hot cocoa with big, fat marshmallows, and so they pretend for those three days that they are simply three best friends in the mountains of New York because they can go to New York and not for anything else.   
Dream throws snowballs at George and he tackles him to the ground and they talk as if everything is normal for those three days.   
Too soon, the trip is over and he’s throwing up into a bag on the flight home, and then he’s back in Orlando and the pain in his head returns, the pain increasing practically tenfold.   
…  
Dr. Garcia was right: almost immediately after the trip and almost immediately after he stops treatment, things take a deep dive down for the worst.   
The pain gets worse, and Dream begins to take the steroids that Dr. Garcia prescribed, but they slightly only numb the pain at best. Eating is a chore more than anything else; chewing hurts his head and he can’t keep down as so much as applesauce without throwing it right back.  
He starts forgetting words, too, much more than he had before, and that’s perhaps the scariest part for him. As a child, the thought of becoming old and starting to forget terrified him.   
And at twenty-one-years-old, that very fear has sunk their claws into his brain and slowly tore it apart.   
Before things get bad bad, he and George have an argument in his kitchen.   
“Don’t you see?” Dream asks George, voice rising. “We wouldn’t even be together if I wasn’t—if I wasn’t—fuck!” He shoves a fistful of magazines off of the counter, hands going to his head as if he clenches it hard enough that the tumor will burst, as if it will disappear.   
He doesn’t care if he looks insane, he doesn’t care if he’s scaring George, he doesn’t care about anything about this moment but he also cares everything about this moment.   
“Fuck, George,” Dream mutters, back turned.   
“I’m here because I love you,” is what George says. The clock on the kitchen wall goes tick-tick-tick in between the silence. “And I have, and I will, Clay, can’t you see that?” his voice rises desperately and there’s a big knot in Dream’s stomach that goes down to his feet, as if he’s being pulled down to the center of the Earth.   
He doesn’t know how to explain it in words, how he feels like every moment he spends with George is fake, a watered-down version of what they eventually could have been, of what they eventually would’ve been.   
He says this later in bed, long after he’s apologized and George has even though he had no reason to.   
They hold hands underneath the covers.   
“I think,” George says as the stars from the projector Sapnap had bought them flicker across the ceiling, “that I just love you in a different way than I used to.”   
Dream hums, his eyes starting to close. He’s started getting tired much more than he used to: when Dr. Garcia told him that was a normal thing, he just nodded. He didn’t have any snarky comeback. The expression she wore in that moment was resigned before quivering as if she were noticing, for the first time, that there were no snarky comebacks. As if she were noticing, for the first time, that there would no longer be any snarky comebacks.   
“What do you mean?” he asks, his voice not much more than a mumble.   
“I don’t think this is the watered-down version of us,” George says. He presses his head against Dream’s chest, legs pulled up to his chest. “I think this is the version of us in this world. And I think that in another world, another reality, the version of us there would be just as real as we are here. The difference is just…” He traces a finger against Dream’s chest. Presses a kiss against his lips. “The difference is just the situation.”  
“Socrates,” Dream says, meaning for it to be a tease, hardly remembering who Socrates is or why he’s comparing George to him.   
And as George turns to meet the eyes of the boy he fell in love with almost six months ago, he watches as the hope in them dims until it’s completely gone, like the fire in them has completely burned out and the leftover smoldering ash has finally been completely blown away in the cold, harsh wind.   
In the dark night, his eyes glimmer like broken stars split completely in two.   
It’s one of the last genuinely nice nights that they have before things begin to take the final downturn.   
…  
There’s a rampage one morning when Clay seems to forget something or everything at all, and he is so, so angry.   
George comes out of the bedroom to see the living room in tatters, to see books dumped across the floor and plates shattered across the kitchen, to see pots scattered on the hardwood, to see rage entirely consuming Clay’s eyes.   
He can tell that Clay hardly knows where he is, that he doesn’t even know why he’s doing this, that he hardly remembers why George is here other than that he loves him.   
When he catches Clay’s eyes, they are entirely consumed by something so devoid of what Clay ever used to be.   
“It’s not fair,” is what he first says, voice so sharp, so cold, and down comes the bookshelf, books folding into each other, spines falling against each other so roughly that George can hear them snap.   
“I know, baby,” George says, softly, stepping over the books that rest by his feet. He moves towards Clay slowly.   
“I’m sorry,” is the second thing Clay says, features shifting, and shifting, and shifting. He drops to his knees. “It hurts,” he whispers.   
And as George is cleaning the apartment back up, it strikes him for the first time that Clay maybe wasn’t referencing his head when he said, “It hurts.”   
…  
It’s after that night that Dream has another seizure, this time in front of his parents and his siblings as they’re leaving and he’s sitting on his couch, and he hears his youngest sister scream but not much of anything else.   
He desperately reaches for and holds a piece of the sea glass in his palm as he begins to lose consciousness.   
…  
When he wakes up in the hospital again, he doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t even process that it’s a hospital.   
He can see a head of brown hair outside the door, and he can hear the voice of them—soft, he thinks, soft and familiar—and he can hear a woman’s voice who he thinks he should know but just can’t.   
“I don’t know how to do this,” he hears the voice say, and he remembers with a gentle George flinch. “It’s like he’s disintegrating in front of me. And I’m so afraid, all the time of—of what’s going to happen. And I know it will, and he knows it will—fuck, we all know. We just don’t want to. And I think that’s what makes it worse.”   
“I know,” he hears the woman say. “It’s really”—and she sniffs, and Dream is almost certain that he can hear tears in her voice but for some reason that feels so wrong, like this woman shouldn’t have tears in her voice—“it’s really hard to deal with.”   
He can see the woman finger the cross necklace that lays on her chest.   
She looks away from George. “I’m planning to quit. After this.”   
Dream can see George look away, too. “I’m really sorry.”   
“Fuck,” she says. “Fuck.”   
He watches as George embraces her even though it feels like he should do anything but, and he watches as George’s expression snaps and fresh, raw tears run down his cheeks.   
His mother and father and siblings visit him in the hospital, and he can only recognize his mother. He tries really hard to pretend that he knows them, who they all are, but when he cannot say his brother’s name when the young boy greets him, the anguish ripples across their faces as if in a giant wave, as fresh and raw as the blooming blood from scraped knee after tripping onto gritty concrete, and Dream just knows.   
…  
He remembers streaming one morning, and there’s no longer anger in his big, green eyes but rather questioning.   
“Why don’t…” There’s a huff in his voice as he tries to find the words as if he’s attempting to untangle the knots of his brain. “Why can’t I stream anymore?” he finally forces out.   
George runs a hand through Dream’s hair.   
He takes steroids for the pain, and something else to help prevent seizures, and he’s usually out of it more often than not. But today he isn’t; today he has questions that he has difficulty asking, today he has questions that he has difficulty understanding why he has them.   
“You remember streaming?” George questions instead of directly answering him.   
Dream’s eyebrows knit together, and his eyes narrow.   
“Never forgot,” he mumbles. “Just didn’t think about it before.”   
George stills at that, and it almost fully puts things into place for him. “You can stream when you’re better,” he says, and saying those words hurt.  
From the look in Dream’s eyes, he knows that there isn’t going to be a when you’re better. He knows that there aren’t going to be any more streams.  
But he doesn’t say that. He looks at George and just says, “Okay.”   
George knows, just then, that he says this for George’s sake and not his own.   
He knows, just then, that he has accepted what comes next.   
…  
He spends some time with Sapnap watching television whenever George is away, always bundled in a cocoon of blankets. Sapnap always leaves a comforting hand on his shoulder as they sit together.   
He sits on the couch and watches Sapnap.   
He feels glad that he remembers, and he can’t entirely remember what he’s remembering, but he feels warm and happy and he hopes that’ll be enough.   
“It’ll be okay,” he says, reaching for his friend’s hand.   
He doesn’t really know why he’s saying it, or what these words are entirely supposed to mean, but he feels like they were important for the moment.   
“It’s alright, Clay,” Sapnap says softly.   
“Alright,” he repeats, feeling the word in his mouth. It feels heavy. It feels false.   
“Going to miss you,” he says later. He’s not sure of what he’s going to miss: there’s a big, blank slate where the future should be, and there’s an angry red X where the past is, but he knows that the saying is true and he knows that boy sitting in front of him knows that it is, too.   
…  
Three nights before, Dream can feel George shaking in the bed next to him. He feels like a little kid as he pulls George towards him, perhaps reminding him of a long-forgotten memory of hugging his sobbing mother tightly to his chest after she and his father had a fight as a young child, but George continues to shake long after Dream recognizes him as asleep.   
“Okay,” he mumbles. “You’re okay,” he mumbles, because it’s the only thing he can remember to do, and even the moment is fuzzy as if he’s now only ever going to be entirely uncertain of what to do.   
…  
He knows that it’s coming.   
He knows that Clay is going to die and he knows that everything around them is going to break into thousands of glass shards, leaving pinpricks in his hands that will allow his blood to drip out of his body until it’s run completely dry.   
He knows this, and he knows this, and he knows this, and so why is he sitting on the floor of Clay’s bathroom, one hand in his hair and the other hopelessly attempting to grip the floor, as if he doesn’t know this?   
He calls his mother for the first time that week.   
“He’s going to die, Mum,” is the first thing that he says to her.   
She asks if he’d like them to come down.   
He says no.   
She asks if he’d like to speak to his father or his sister.   
He says no.  
She asks if he’d like to see pictures of his dog and his cat and the new kitten.  
With his voice completely broken, he says that he doesn’t know.   
With a whimper that he knows he cannot let Clay hear, he says, “I don’t know why.”   
She stays on the phone as he sobs even though it’s one AM in Orlando, Florida and it’s five AM in Brighton, London, and under any other condition she’d be tucked into bed with her husband, fast asleep.   
…  
The morning of, Dream is sitting on the couch next to George, legs stretched out on the couch and head leaning in the crook of his shoulder. It’s early; the sun has only just risen. He usually gets to watch it rise with George as they share a cup of tea. They’ve been doing it a lot lately: waking up, George helping him outside, pointing to the sun with a smile that never reaches his eyes.   
But this morning, it was cloudy outside, and it was harder than usual for Dream to wake up this morning. He knows that he sleeps more, he knows that he’s quieter, but the best thing he can hope is that it doesn’t hurt George too much.  
They’re sitting on the couch together and the television is off, and George’s eyes are half-shut but the moment Dream moves they’ll snap open, as if George is a young mother and Dream is his new infant son.   
Dream knows that there’s something important he has to do, that there’s something before, but he really can’t remember before what is going to be.   
He’ll startle after dozing in-and-out of consciousness, sometimes, when he thinks before and he suddenly thinks words like big and black and gone. He doesn’t know what they mean on their own, entirely, but the feeling left from the thought of them makes his stomach feel funny.   
He knows that it’s coming and he knows that he has to say something, but it doesn’t come then and so he doesn’t say his words.   
Not yet, a chilling voice in his head whispers to him. But soon.  
He shivers underneath his thick blanket and that’s when George startles, heard turning to make sure that he’s going.   
“I miss it,” he says aloud, brain thinking of Discord calls and Tommy and Wilbur and the server and the SMP and bright, pixelated boxes and uploads. Like big and black and gone, the words hold no meaning individually, but the images that they bring to his brain help him know that they’re important words. That they meant something. That they mean something.   
George seems to understand what he’s saying, or at least part of his, because he just pushes Dream close against his chest like the warmth from his body can stop what they both know is going to happen.   
By the evening, Dream knows.   
He’s still on the couch, a bowl of ice chips on his lap, and George is still sitting right next to him. Dream moves the bowl off of his lap and almost spills it, but the ice chips stay upright as he places the bowl next to him.   
A feeling of desperation bubbles up in his chest and he grabs George’s hand and squeezes though he knows his grip is weak. But George still tilts his head towards him, he still moves back and looks at him with a tender look in his eyes. “Clay?” he asks gently.  
Dream moves back, too, and the pain in his head expands more. It’s worse than it’s been before, even with the steroids and medication.   
“Gogy,” he whispers, unsure of where the name came from but from the way George’s eyes widen and then soften, he knows that it holds meaning.   
Dream knows that his eyes lower sadly. It’s hard to hold them open. “Am sorry,” he whispers. “Tell Nick sorry…” His eyes are fully closed but he grasps George’s hand again, tighter this time, as tight as he can manage.   
He reaches into his sweatshirt pocket and pulls out a bag with little colorful glittering glass, and presses it into George’s hands. He doesn’t remember what the colorful pieces are, where they're from, but he knows that they’re important. George’s eyes fill with tears as he looks down at the bag.   
He opens his eyes as much as he can, which is just a tiny little glimmer, and he says, “I love you.”   
He knows that it’s over then, knows it as he finishes the sentence, knows it as George pulls him close.   
I love you, he thinks, and it’s then in that moment right between that he knows he’s learned what love really is.   
I love you, he thinks one final time as his eyes fully close and as he falls against George’s chest.   
Forever, and ever, and ever.   
He isn’t able to say those words, but they still hang in the air long after it’s already happened, long after it’s already been said.   
For hours, and hours, and hours.   
…  
After, George holds Clay’s body against himself for what feels like hours and he cries until he can’t stop anymore.   
He cries until he feels like every part of him is gone.   
He cries like every part of him has already been long gone; cries like every single inside of him has floated out of his body like steam rising out of a hot spring.   
…  
That evening, before he’s called his mother or Sapnap and Clay’s been taken away, it is him who goes on a rampage; this time, it is him who throws books and throws magazine and smashes plates and throws and rips up the goddamn packets of oatmeal—the ones that Clay began to eat only after he got very sick—all over the floor.   
This time, it is Sapnap who comes to the house and cleans up the mess. This time, it is Sapnap who places the books back on the bookshelf and sweeps the shards of glass up.   
“I’m sorry,” George says by the end of the night, voice hoarse.   
And Sapnap looks at him, and Sapnap stays silent, but he begins to cry.   
And so they sit there, on the floor of Clay’s cold, empty apartment and they, two fully-grown men, hold each other against each other as they sob.   
…  
He’s back in Brighton but living at home with his parents when he gets the email from Sapnap.   
It’s titled From Clay and there’s a file attached. When he clicks on it, he lets out a little breath of shock. His phone screen is filled with Clay, back before he was very sick, when he wasn’t completely made of bones and when his hair was still thick and when his cheeks were full and the sparkle in his eyes, albeit bitter, still remained.   
George feels his eyes feel with tears as he presses play on the video, before Clay’s even began to talk.  
On-screen, Clay runs a hand through his hair. He sighs and turns to face the camera.   
“Hi, George,” he says, voice soft but still sounding like the Clay he used to be, and George takes in a sharp inhale. He feels himself shaking, vibrating, like there’s something inside him trying to escape.   
“I asked Sapnap to send this to you, you know”—he grimaces—“after, so if he followed my direction, you should be watching this while my body is cold and dead and—shit, sorry. Sore subject?”   
Despite himself, George lets out a tiny laugh.   
“And I just—listen, if I didn’t fuck up, I’m hoping I told you I loved you before I—before. But I just want you to know, George, that I love you. I love you so much, and I really hope I made that clear. I really—you’ve made me who I am. You made me the best person that I could be even with—with all of…this. And just—know that. Please.”   
He takes another breath. George can see the glimmering tears in his eyes, but the on-screen Clay just continues to talk.   
“I didn’t know it’d be you, George, but I’m really glad that it was. And I know…I know I’m going to die. And the thought of that just makes me—scared. And I’m sad, and I’m angry, but there are so many layers to this and—shit. I don’t want to, like, ruin this for you. I want you to, like, cherish this. Or something.”   
Clay pauses.   
“Oh, who the fuck cares. George, I want you to play lots, and lots, and lots—emphasis on lots—of fucking Minecraft. I want you to keep running the server and I—I”—and George can see how difficult it is for him to say this, how hard he’s beginning to shake—“I don’t want it all to stop just because I have,” he says, swallowing.   
“I want you to talk to Nick, too, because—let’s be honest—he doesn’t have too many friends.”   
George chuckles.   
“And if he tells you that I said the exact same thing about you in what I sent him, he’s lying. Maybe. Alright.”   
Clay sighs again.   
“I’m sorry things had to go this way,” he says, voice small, so much smaller than George ever thought the voice of a six-foot-three twenty-one-year-old could sound.   
“But I’m really, really glad that it was with you. And I know that this sounds like a bad break-up letter—just to be clear, I’m dumping you the moment I die. We are no longer dating. So, like. Don’t stay single for the rest of your life. I know that I’m just completely amazing, but—“   
He cuts the sentence off there.  
“I know that we fought when we were friends, and I know that we fought when I was sick, and I know that we fought when we loved each other but—just know that I, I don’t regret anything about it.”   
He stands up, moving towards his phone. He tilts his head a bit, shaggy bangs falling across his eyebrows. “I love you,” he says, voice completely sincere. “And thank you. Take care of Patches. Take care of yourself. Talk to people. Do well in life. And in case I haven’t said this yet…”   
He pauses. Smiles a very, very sad smile.   
“I love you, George.”   
The video cuts off there, cuts off to a black screen, and George can see his reflection in his phone with tears streaming down his cheeks.   
There’s something in his chest that begins to ache, but it’s not the worst thing in the world, and George is happy for that.   
I love you, he mouths to the ceiling above him, hoping that it reaches the sky.   
…  
Four weeks later, he’s standing at the coast of the beach near Clay’s house with his mother and his father and Clay’s father and Clay’s mother and Clay’s siblings and Nick.  
He holds a pot he made in third grade close to his chest before extending it forward.   
Someone's hands dips in, he’s not entirely sure whose, and the hand lifts up, and a cloud of ash powders into the sea.   
George reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of sea glass. He stares down at it. “I love you,” he says aloud, tears dripping down his cheeks.  
“Forever, and ever, and ever.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anddd, that's a wrap!  
> Thank you so much for reading. If you enjoyed, please leave a kudos or a comment or maybe both.  
> Much love <3  
> Please feel free to follow or shoot me a message on Twitter @holdinontolou (:  
> Update: I am so surprised by the response I've received! Thank you guys so much. I read every comment and although I may not reply to all of them, I read and cherish ALL of them. I sent out a tweet with of my fic, and if you enjoyed and want to share, I would sincerely appreciate a retweet! [here is the tweet link!](https://twitter.com/holdinontolou/status/1345487212318662658)  
> Thank you all so much once again <3


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